~ Camping adventures, now with a trailer

Category Archives: Camper Trailer

We’ve been rocking some cheapie handheld’s for a while. We grabbed a pair off eBay a while back for a little fun around the campsite with the boys. But they have come in handy for a whole bunch or reasons. If we are travelling with someone else they are handy for staying in touch, if we split up out on a camp trip its helpful for getting the forgotten sunscreen or announcing dinner. Meanwhile on the road, keeping track of the trucks channels has been helpful to know of trouble ahead. In at least one case we managed to get off the Cunningham highway for a scenic tour of Boonah, instead of waiting out a closed highway for a few hours. We run mostly channel 18 (its supposed to be the caravans channel – not that we hear anyone else on it so we chatter away ourselves without bothering anyone ) and have a second “watch channel” on 40. Channel 40 is the trucks channel for most, but not all, of Australia’s highways (google it). Some times the language is a bit colourful but thats what the volume know is for. When on the road we just clip one to the dash so the range is not the great but its good enough for local info we suppose. We bought some vinyl lettering on eBay for the back of our trailer too.

Last year up at the Bunya mountains (dang we meant to blog that) we ran into some fossickers, who showed off some of their stones from Emerald/Sapphire way (get what these places are named after ?) and our junior entrepreneurs thought they might get to strike it rich too. Being summer we thought central Queensland might be a bit hot, so we looked South and in particular New England, where with the altitude it was quite a bit cooler.

Thus with out 50th night in our camper trailer in our sights we headed to Bullock Mountain Homestead some 15kms north of Glen Innes, a delightful farm on top of a hill. We camped down by the creek and soon had ourselves a good time pan handling for riches and loving our 50th night in our camper trailer too.

We had some local help too….go Molly go!!! and came up with a few umm… rocks!!. The next day we decided to head out to the old mine a kilometre or so down the creek, but decided discretion was the better part of valour after running into a few to many Joe Blakes (of the red bellied kind) in the grass on the way. Alas that was our only chance to get there as it rained for the next few days (though it seemed longer). Fortunately Star Wars monopoly and Catan Junior board games came to the rescue and Mr 6 and Mr nearly 8 were well entertained.

Over night the creek rose about a metre and there were sheets of water on the ground. Fortunately our Emu camper trailer kept us dry with its heavy canvas and bath tub floor, we only had one leak to content with (through a zipper where we didn’t put the outside flap down all the way down). The next day everything dried out pretty quick and we were soon off down the highway.

Our plan was to head to the coast via the old Grafton Road, luckily we skipped this owing to time because as we passed the exit point near grafton we noticed some traffic warning for the road – likely it was flooded. Along the way and where we could get signal with co-pilot working the wiki camps app

Rockpool fun – crabs, cucumbers and all manner of critters

Panhandlers at work

Molly helping out

we booked us some comfortable digs at Iluka where we got to explore some rock pools, have a dip and our budding stunt riders showed us their tricks before heading home 3 days later.

All up a great little trip for the new year, a quick shout out to the driver reviver places for the fantastic job keeping us all awake – a few less chocolates and cordial drinks for the kiddies next time though please!!!

We headed back to Darlington Park a few weekends ago, sometimes busy but always has a serenity about it. This was where we took our first ever try of a camper trailer (A hired jobbie) as a try before you buy, so it was nice to return in our own this time. The kids are now a few years older, so the tin tacs of camping now a well worn routine and there was even some opportunity to relax.

Nice to to camp with my sister and her kids too. Its been over a decade since we camped together, a camping safari through Africa BK (before kids) was the last trip. A bit non plussed about the stories shared from our childhood though ..it given our boys a few too many ideas.

Nice to get a view of the lost world razorback, from out back of the park. I climbed this a few times in my youth, was I nuts?

The o’l 4 burner bbq is getting a bit long in the tooth and we had a bit of XMAS money left over from the inlaws. Its nice to cross purpose a bit, so was mindful of buying somethig we could take camping too. A bit of a hunt around online and through friends and we decided to pony up for a Weber baby Q. The price is a bit of a shock, but since we had our last BBQ for 10 years we decided its not as big a factor as quality and reliability. Some people cook some prety amazing things on them and they look really cheap on the gas too coming it at around 1/8th of the gas consumption (http://www.weberbbq.com.au/QGasEconomy.php). The other that impressed us on the user reviews was the amazing customer support years after a purchase.

We ended up with the base model, figuring the extra height and temp guage were not essential.

Its taken a bit of re-education to cook with them , but the results are great. As for doing anything fancey have baked a few loaves of bread on it so far – both of which didnt last the hour when our.

People rave about the flavour….yep definately a step up for both the usual BBQ , the salmon was amazing and the bread had a nice smokey taste.

We like how quickly everythig takes. There is a bit more clean up ( do this every few cooks) than the old bbq plate which we tended to just do a quick scrape and leave everythig else skanky. Looking forward to taking it away.

Oh the accessories we havent bothered with anything other than the trivet for baking.

Now just need to get our gas bottles over to POL rather than the mix we have had

We have been using an old toolbox with a little GEL cell and some LED lights for a while (See details here). Its only a little thing but the double handling of getting it in and out(the point of a camping trailer is to reduce this) and having a bit more room to pack stuff you don’t need), and remembering to get the solar charger out is a little tedious. Then there was the time, despite our use of camping lists we left it at home completely. Anyway here is version 2. Basically a little hardwood plywood box on the side of the trailer to keep all our stuff in. We opted for hardwood, because it seemed like a good idea. I had the folks at bunnings to most of the cuts (only $1 a cut and they don’t usually charge) so that it would all be nice and straight when screwed and glued together. A piano hinge, some self adhesive door seals and some left over house paint (gun metal grey) and it doesn’t look too shabby. I’ve made up a few more lights using the LED strip lights for inside and out. They are really light (as in not heavy) so just attach to bits of velcro on the various poles around the trailer. I’m using the same battery (7AH) from the tool box, a $2 voltmeter from eBay to keep an eye on e the charge. The solar cell I’ve screwed to the top of the toolbox (hope no 0ne steps on it) so it trickle charges away in the carport and on the road and have routed the cable through with the other power to the trailer.

Inside i keep the torches for the toilet runs (and some times it is with little kids) and adapters to charge the mobile and the Kindle as well.

All in all I’ve still resisted the urge to spend lots of money, over complicate life through developing a great engineering solution thats fiddly. Plenty of room in the box if i decide for bigger batteries down the track, charge controller etc..

He’s a question for my buddies on myswag.org I was thinking of doing a bit of wiring for solar on my trailer and noticed that the wiring goes through above the suspension bush? is this OK? i reckon its a candidate for wearing through the outer insulation over time

A few trips out in the camper trailer and we realised that the little head lamps and lanterns weren’t quite going to cut it in terms of convenience. A brief look around at what other people were doing and we were, well …gob smacked. inverters, dual car lead acid batteries seem to be the norm…and come with a complexity and price tag to boot.

So we set out for something a little more modest for our needs which were basically to have a bit of light to see by a night. A lot came from junk lying around the workshop and a few trips to ebay (who’s got time to shop anyway)Outside PicturHere’s what we came up with

– old plastic tool box for portable power

– A 12vdc sealed gel cell (7Ah capacity, more than enough to run a few lights)

– some LED strip lights from ebay (can get 10m of lights for $10 or so)

– A 12VDC accessory 4 socket outlet (i picked this as the standard connection system cause its common, not as expensive as those anderson plugs)

– some switches

– a solar panel charger (paid less than $20 for this one from supercheap)

Top opening panels reveals

main power switch – which when the lid shuts it shuts off the power…gotta be fool proff

– 12V accessory sockets to plug lights in,

– swithces for a night light (essential for small kiddies)

– some on box lights from the LED strip (just peel and stick)

– USB charger for electronics bits

– a $2 accessory socket volt meter (tried to buy a panel meter but they are $12 go figure )

Inside

Gel cell, 7Ah

Strip lights on a wooden stick i can hang from roof of tent using velcro

Solar cell as charger (I added a shotkey diode so it wouldn’t drain the battery when the sun isn’t out and I forget to unplug it). NOTE its a slow enough charger than its a trickle charger so no need to worry about a charge controller

Power budget

Lights draw anything from 10mA to 100mA which is 0.01 or 0.1A. Given the battery is rated to 7Ah it means I have at least 70hrs running time before a charge is needed…depending on how many lights I want to plug in and for how long. The solar cell is rated at 4w and charges up from 12.3v to 13.2v in a morning so that seems OK

Ever since putting a trojan hand pump on a jerry can for camping, we’ve noticed they leak. Not so much that it was a problem…but it didn’t seem a very good thing. Some months later enter our camper trailer, fitted with an excellent Drifta kitchen. It came from our trailer supplier with, you guessed it Trojan pumps, and yep they had a bit of a leak too. We didn’t worry solo much, that is till the tank ran dry and up came the drill scarfing (seems they weren’t to careful with the install of the water tank) 😦 Anyways the little bits of plastic went all through the trojan pumps. Most of it could be got out of the pumps but not all.

So after flushing the water tank a few times off started the search for a better water pump (seems i’m not the only one). Turns out Drifta was a good place to check into and if they supply the taps they only supply Breha pumps (I think our trailer guys must have used trojans when they did the install), we that was good enough for me. We contacted drifta and they were helpful, we ordered a couple and first trip out and no leaks, problems! Viva Breha!